


Cathedrals in My Heart

by Saucery



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Canon Backstory, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Drama, Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Introspection, Loss, Morality, Pack Dynamics, Pack Family, Pack Feels, Past Character Death, Suicidal Thoughts, Werewolves, Wolf Pack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-13
Updated: 2013-01-13
Packaged: 2017-11-25 08:32:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/637021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saucery/pseuds/Saucery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek thinks about his family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cathedrals in My Heart

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from [this song](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyMhvkC3A84) by Coldplay.

* * *

 

Derek knows what they all think. Isaac. Boyd. Erica. Scott. His new pack. He knows what they think about Derek's old pack, about Derek's family. They think Derek's family is a burden on him, that it burns dark as hell, that it's the stone about his neck, the snarl in his voice. They think that grief has driven him mad, has made him bitter, has made him capable of cruelty. They think that Derek's family is the source of it all, the cross of thorns in the aching pit of him, in the hollows carved out of him by loss. They think that his family _is_ that loss.

It isn't. Derek's family is what keeps him alive. What kept him alive, those long months after the fire, when everything was ashen and grey, shot through with pulses of agonizing red. In those days, he'd wanted to kill himself - could scarcely excuse himself for living. Sometimes, he thought he _was_ dead, that he had died with them and that his soul was simply trapped here, acid-sharp, eating itself with guilt. Other times, he was sure he still smelled blackened wood and bone, that he felt the flames licking his skin, as if he had been there. 

But that wasn't his family haunting him; it was his own betrayal of them. It was Kate.

His family kept him living through that, living _for_ them, now that they couldn't live for themselves. And they wouldn't have wanted him to stick around Beacon Hills, to drive himself to vengeance, thinking of hurting Kate, the one he had loved to his own ruination, and theirs. 

They wouldn't have wanted that.

And so, he left.

He left for New York, and started anew, and even when Laura was taken from him and he returned, it was still with her strength that he managed to return. It was still in her memory that he lived, where he was still the little brother that made her laugh, that she teased, that she had watched over, during his first full moon, that she had taught how to hunt. 

His family wasn't the weakness in him. He was.

Even now, it is the same coldness he'd always had, that Laura had always warned him of, that makes him hurt or drive away his new pack; even now, it is the savagery Kate had taught him that makes him smile at the thought of another's suffering, of doing to Gerard what Gerard did to his Omegas, thrice over.

Even now, it is his family that brings him back, that anchors him, that recalls to him what kindness is, that allows him to recognize it in Deaton and in Stiles. Even now, his family is the best in him: his father's lessons on protectiveness and his mother's lessons on honor; his sister's lessons on playfulness and his cousin's lessons on patience. Dinners at the table. Held hands. Bowed heads. Grace.

It is still his family that guides him. It always will be. Alpha, Beta, Omega. The triskelion.

 

* * *

  


**fin.**


End file.
